


a mind that is thistles and weeds

by Waistcoat35



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), captain america: the winter soldier - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, No Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Shown stabbing, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 18:24:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15935840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waistcoat35/pseuds/Waistcoat35
Summary: After the crash, he runs. He runs and runs and runs until he can’t physically run any more, until his footsteps can no longer keep the pace of his heartbeat and his legs are more leaden than the tangled ball of memories in his head. He comes to know more of the moon than the sun, more of the stars than the clouds, more of the darkness than of the once-welcoming cerulean of the day.





	a mind that is thistles and weeds

After the crash, he runs. He runs and runs and runs until he can’t physically run any more, until his footsteps can no longer keep the pace of his heartbeat and his legs are more leaden than the tangled ball of memories in his head. He comes to know more of the moon than the sun, more of the stars than the clouds, more of the darkness than of the once-welcoming cerulean of the day.

He sleeps in strange beds and sopping alleyways and sometimes just doesn’t sleep at all, or can’t – when he sleeps it’s fitful, so the lines between slumber and wakefulness slowly blur, blur like his vision, blur so that nothing makes sense anymore, so that his speech is as slurred and sluggish as his mind.

He steals, too, grabs and snatches and lashes out when he’s caught until there are rumours in towns, in villages, in _counties_ , of a monster with metal claws who snarls when you go near and who takes what he needs. It’s not dissimilar to the headlines of the last god-knows-how-many years, and he can’t change people’s minds – he’s having enough trouble managing his own.

* * *

 

It changes after three months, two weeks and five days. (He’s been counting. Last time he tried to run they caught him after only two. He’s been lucky.) There’s a kid getting beaten up in an alleyway – barely on the brink of seventeen. His head is telling him it’s nothing, it’s not important, it’s more trouble than it’s worth to go over – there could be cameras. There could be guns. It could be some kind of elaborate decoy.

But a small part of him buried beneath the rest, beneath the dirt of his deeds and the layer of mould grown over his memories, is stretching, yawning, finished with it’s winter hibernation. (The winter is over, he never wants to be called that again, he’s tired of winter because that means cold and cold means numb and numb means sleeping through the end of the world, all over again-) That same part is starting to liven up, to nag at him. To remind him the boy who keeps getting up after the figures surrounding him knock him down time and again is not dissimilar to the man on the helicarrier. Who’d stood and stared and hadn’t wanted to hurt.

_I could do this all day-_

_I had him on the ropes-_

_Stevestevesteve_ steve-

He goes over.

Two are sent reeling with stomach blows. He doesn’t check to see if they’re dead. A third is slammed into the side of a trashcan. There’s a crack, and he thinks it sounds a little like when he’d been thrown against the wall by Pierce. It had hurt. A part of him that cowers from the memory automatically hopes that the person is okay, but only a part smaller and less powerful than the urge to _defend, protect, stop, stop, stopstopstopstop –_

He has been hesitating for too long. The forth is yanked backwards, is knocked unconscious, and the boy is doubled over. There is a slit in his chest. It looks small. It isn’t bleeding – yet. But the knife isn’t in it – it’s loosely clutched in the unconscious man’s hand. If it’s been taken out – the wound will bleed soon. He knows from experience. (And he’d been punished for taking the knife out, even. It had hurt. It had hurt and he’d panicked and yanked it away and been told that he was wasting time, resources, risking the loss of their asset, and once he’d been treated it had been back to the chamber _and the dark and the cold and nononono so many nos-_ )

He shakes, and whether it is to clear his mind or something he cannot help, he does not know.

He wants to drive the knife into the unconscious man’s chest when he looks at the boy on the ground. But he wonders – he wonders if the boy would blame himself if he did that. If he’d just gotten too deep into a misunderstanding. If doing this of his own volition is all that different to doing it because he’s been made to. And if he does the same things once he has free will then that makes him no better now than what he was. And besides – there’s no time.

ETA three minutes until the slit is a gash. Until the skin is blood. Until the spikes are a flat line.

He’s run further than the distance to the hospital in two.

Once he’s there, there are fluorescent lights and clamour and he’s being pushed into a plastic chair as the boy is rushed away, but it’s too familiar and there are too many people and too many lights and too many _hands_ and everything is cold, but he feels the weight of the arm and thinks of the crack as he hit the wall, as the man hit the trashcan, and he bolts without touching anybody.

* * *

 

There are rumours in towns, villages, counties, states, _countries_ , about the figure with the metal arm who saved a young man with a stab wound. Who ran to the hospital with him on his back. Who flinched from the doctors and nurses and stayed at an angle so the cameras couldn’t catch him properly. Who ran, who bolted, who vanished once again.

The news travels far, and he regrets it.

But he doesn’t regret doing what he did.

Because there’s a picture in the paper. Of that young man being held close by his mother.

A picture in his mind of a younger one, mother’s eyes ruby-ringed with worry and dark-circled with tiredness, perched on a kitchen counter with a broken arm and not enough money for a doctor.

There are pictures in the papers of a tall man, not quite as young by half, armed with a shield and a scowl with which he fights the world. When he needs to, at least.

There’s a picture in front of him now, another two months onward, in a cave. The man should be tall, but he’s crouched forward, trying to seem smaller. He’s still pretty young, but his eyes look twice as old. He has no shield. He has no scowl. He’s reaching out one arm. Talking in a soft voice. The hand is close to his, and he takes it.

He takes it because the hand looks warm and Steve’s expression looks warmer and he’s tired of being cold, because cold means numbness and if he's the opposite of cold that means he can feel again. 

There is a hand. Just one. And it gently reaches to the base of his skull, unfastens the middle. There is blood on him and he doesn't know how old it is, or where it's from, but it's getting on Steve.

"I'm sorry," he says as he's gently gathered into an embrace, and he isn't at all sure that he's only talking about the blood.

"Shhh. It's alright, Buck." Is the reply. He doesn't think Steve's talking about the blood at all. 


End file.
